Monday, December 2, 2013

After trying her hand
at many things, environmental engineer Karen Hall has determined that her
favorite media are words, photographs and yarn. Author of two Hannah
Morrison thrillers, Karen is currently finishing a novel about infertility and working
on a third Hannah Morrison mystery. Learn more about her and her books at
her website.

Today Karen stops by to chat about
two of her favorite things and illustrates them with the third.

That Universal
Baby Gift: The Crocheted Blanket

It’s a fact of
life. People have babies.

And though
most parents these days can (and do) register for gifts in a myriad of places,
they also really appreciate a handmade gift as well. And all of you out
there, you’re the crafty people who make the other baby shower attendees say,
“Ooooooh. That’s gorgeous! How did you do that?”

But here’s the
dilemma, at least for me: despite modern technology, lots of parents
decide NOT to know the gender of the baby until his/her birth. So, how to
finish the hand-made gift between birth and shower date?

My
answer: gifts that work for either girls or boys and that work year
around—non-gender-specific baby blankets.

The advantage
here, of course, is that you can start as soon as you hear that somebody’s
pregnant. I’ll admit it; I’m slow. Because television usually takes less than
half a brain, I use the rest of mine to construct lovely gifts for babies and
grandchildren. But since TV is such a wasteland these days, that means,
for me, crocheting maybe an hour a day, sometimes starting months in advance,
depending on the complexity of the blanket.

Here are two
of my favorite patterns. The first, a rainbow blanket that’s appreciated especially by people who love
lots of color, is the easier of the two. It’s constructed almost
completely with the double crochet stitch, and there are only a couple of
tricky rows. It can be made with sport weight or worsted weight yarn, and
can be a great way to use up leftover half skeins you have lying around.
It can also be made with pastels (as in the picture here) or with brighter
colors, depending on what you have and/or what you can find locally.
You’ll see that I couldn’t find a nice pastel orange here in Rapid City, so I
used a more modern multicolored yarn that’s predominantly orange. It’ll
work for this mother to be, though – Amy loves quirky little surprises.
Finally, the best thing about this pattern is that you can finish all but the
last row. Then, when the baby is born, add a border of the appropriate
color. I just found out that Amy’s having a boy.

The second
blanket (above), the one with
multicolored squares, is more futzy, but I really love the result. If you
know the gender, of course, you can make the squares all pink or all blue, or
if you know how the baby’s room will be decorated, you can make the squares to
match. I once used this pattern to make a Cat in the Hat-colored
blanket with bright red, turquoise and white. I thought it would be odd,
but it turned out to be pretty cool! You can also, if you like, make each
square all of one color. It’s easier, for sure, but also less
spectacular.

This blanket
has its advantages, too. It’s another way to use leftover yarns, and
because you make it a square at a time, it’s very portable—easy to take in the
car, to a basketball game, to a meeting. I never go anywhere without a
book and, when I’m working on one of these blankets, rarely go anywhere without
a small bag of yarn and a crochet hook, too.

Finally,
here’s my tip for using those little bits of yarn that you find you have at the
end of a project. For those of you who don’t use gift bags, use that yarn
instead of ribbon when you wrap gifts. The pompoms you create will be
distinctive and, if you’re like me, you have tons of yarn ends left over. (And P.S.,
cats love to play with the pompoms.) I store my yarn ends all in plastic bags
in my “yarn bench” (pictured above, under the rainbow blanket), and get out
whatever colors I need to match the gift wrap I have. Here’s how to make
them:

Wrap the yarn
around three fingers, somewhere between 70 and 100 times, depending on how much
yarn you have.

Tie the center
of the bundle with the ends you’ve left on the top of the package.

Clip the loops
on either side of the middle tie.

Fluff out the
ends and trim if they’re uneven.

Voila!
A unique way to give your gifts that crafty signature—and save a little cash to
boot!

If you’d like
to receive either of the baby blanket patterns I’ve shown above (free, of
course), please just drop me an email at karen@karenehall.com,
and I’ll send them to you. Just specify whether you’d like the rainbow
blanket or the multi-square one or both.

Unreasonable Risk

Hannah
Morrison’s place of business might as well be a bomb. Nearly everything inside
the fence is either flammable or explosive—and somebody is trying to blow it
up. Hannah’s friend and mentor has already died, and though she knows it’s
sabotage, she can’t prove it. With the help of photojournalist Noel Keller,
Hannah uncovers suspect after suspect as the stakes mount for the refinery, its
neighborhood and the entire city. Determined to avenge her friend’s death,
Hannah works to identify the saboteur before he decides: who will be the next to die?

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I'm so glad I stopped by for crocheting inspiration. I thought the knitters had totally taken over. lol With a new baby coming into our family mid-way through next year, maybe I'll get this done. We just found out it's a girl, which helps.Your protagonist sounds very interesting. Were you, by any chance, in an internet class called something like "finishing your mystery?" Best of luck with your new release!Cathy Shouse

Hi, Cathy,No, I wasn't a member of that class. I've never taken one via the internet but would love to. Maybe a class in memoir or biography -- I'm working on a bio for a friend of mine right now and need some pointers.

Karen

PS I know how you feel about knitters... I do both, but prefer crochet. Just let me know if you'd like either of the patterns!

CRAFTY CRIMES

PATCHWORK PERIL

DECOUPAGE CAN BE DEADLY

MOSAIC MAYHEM

REVENGE OF THE CRAFTY CORPSE

CREWEL INTENTIONS

an Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mini-Mystery

DEATH BY KILLER MOP DOLL

ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY GLUE GUN

THE ANASTASIA POLLACK CRAFTING MYSTERIES

Read about Anastasia in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery seriesby Lois Winston. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Kirkus Reviews called it "North Jersey's more mature answer to Stephanie Plum." Assault With a Deadly Glue Gunwas also a Book of the Year Award nominee from ForeWord Reviews, a Daphne du Maurier Award finalist, and a Readers Choice Award nominee from the Salt Lake City Library System. Other books in the series include Death by Killer Mop Doll, Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, Decoupage Can Be Deadly, and the ebook only mini-mysteries Crewel Intentions and Mosaic Mayhem. Look for more of Anastasia's adventures coming in the future.

About Me

I'm the crafts editor at American Woman magazine; the single parent of two teenage boys and a Shakespeare quoting parrot; caretaker to a semi-invalid, communist mother-in-law from Hell and her demon dog; daughter to a multi-married descendant of the Czars (supposedly); reluctant cat-sitter to Mama's extremely corpulent white Persian cat; a born Jersey girl; and star of my own amateur sleuth mystery series.